Deities of Agriculture in Ancient Egypt

Document Type : Original Research Articles

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Abstract

Agriculture was the foundation of ancient Egypt; it helped the ancient Egyptians to turn dry lands into rich fields after the inundation of the Nile.
The ancient Egyptian paid a great importance to the agriculture due to two reasons; one of them was to afford his needs from food, drink, and clothes. The second was religious purposes, as he was farming to present different kind of offerings to the deities to protect and help him. Scenes of agriculture life started to be represented for the first time during the Old Kingdom and continued during the Middle Kingdom. During the New Kingdom they began to represent some deities accompanied the agricultural scenes in order to celebrate and protect the harvest, in addition to ensure plenty and good harvest in the future.
The aim of this study is to highlight the deities of agriculture whether appeared in the agriculture life scenes or not and to investigate the main roles which were played by these deities in the agriculture life especially those who appeared in its scenes and the reason of that. This study is depending on the descriptive and analytical methodology to achieve its aims.  
The result of this study reveals that the ancient Egyptians worshiped a huge number of Egyptian deities, but only three deities appeared accompanied the agriculture life scenes during the New Kingdom, these deities are "Amūn" king of the deities and deity of fertility in ancient Egypt, "Rennutet" deity of the harvest and "Nepri" deity of the grain. Maybe this is because of the increase of their cult especially during that time.

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